しずけさに
こたえをさがす
つきのひと
shizukesa ni / kotae o sagasu / tsuki no hito
in the silence / someone searches / for an answer on the moon
The café near the station always smelled like warm milk and tired metal. The kind of place where nothing ever changed except the people aging inside it. I used to go there often—always at the same time, always to meet the same man. His name doesn’t matter. What matters is that he had the strange habit of asking questions that sounded simple but never were.
That day, as I sat down, he was already there. His coffee sat untouched, cooling beside a small notebook covered in scribbles. Outside, rain slid down the window in slow, uneven streaks.
Without looking up, he asked, “How much would you pay to go to the moon?”
I laughed, because what else do you do with a question like that?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure I’d want to go.”
He finally looked at me. His eyes were the color of late evening—somewhere between blue and grey.
“Of course you’d want to go,” he said. “Everyone does. They just don’t admit it. Everyone wants to escape gravity.”
He took a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket and slid it across the table. It was a magazine clipping, the glossy kind you find on airplanes. The headline read: ‘Private Companies Begin Selling Civilian Trips to the Moon.’ The picture showed a couple in white suits floating above the Earth, smiling like they had finally outrun themselves.
“Seventy million for a ticket,” he said. “What’s seventy million worth to you?”
I watched the steam rise from my cup and curl into nothing. “It’s not about the money,” I said. “It’s about where you think you’re going.”
He smiled in that small, quiet way of his—the kind of smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.
“The moon isn’t about destination,” he said. “It’s about distance. You think if you go far enough, you’ll finally be able to hear yourself think.”
There was something heavy about the way he said it. Like he’d already tried, in some smaller way.
“You think that’s worth paying for?” I asked.
He shrugged. “People pay for distraction all the time. Maybe silence is just the luxury version.”
For a while, neither of us spoke. The rain grew steadier outside, blurring the reflection of the streetlights until everything looked like it was melting.
Finally, he leaned forward. “Imagine it. You’re standing on the moon. There’s no sound. No chatter, no clocks, no background noise. The whole planet is there beneath you, small and blue and fragile, and for once, you can see it all without being in it. What would you feel?”
I thought about it. “Small, probably. Maybe lonely.”
He nodded slowly. “Exactly. Loneliness you can finally measure.”
The waitress came by with refills. He thanked her softly, though he didn’t touch his cup. The light from the window cast his reflection across the table—it looked faint, almost transparent, as if he were already halfway gone.
“Do you ever feel like your life is running too fast for you to catch up?” he asked.
“Every day,” I said.
He smiled again, more tired this time. “That’s why I think about the moon. Not for the view. For the slowness. Up there, nothing happens. No noise. No deadlines. Just silence and dust and time finally taking its time.”
He turned the cup in his hands, leaving faint rings of coffee on the table. “I used to think that’s what I wanted,” he said. “Silence. Escape. A place where my thoughts couldn’t find me.”
“And now?” I asked.
He looked at me for a long time before answering. “Now I’m not so sure. Maybe what I was running from was the part of myself that still wanted to stay.”
Outside, a train passed, its sound deep and rhythmic like a heartbeat under the city. The whole window trembled. He watched it go until the vibration faded.
“I think people misunderstand the moon,” he said. “They think it’s empty. But maybe it’s just quiet. Maybe it’s not what’s missing that matters, but what you bring to it.”
I didn’t know how to reply. He was right, though I didn’t want to admit it. We all dream of escape, but what we’re really trying to escape is the noise inside our own heads. The kind that follows you even into sleep.
We sat there for another hour, saying little. The rain softened. The café emptied. When he finally stood up, he left a few coins on the table and looked out the window one last time.
“You know,” he said, “we’re all already paying to go to the moon in small ways. Every time we chase something that takes us further from ourselves—work, ambition, endless motion—that’s the ticket price. The higher you climb, the quieter it gets. And then one day, you realize you’re floating, but you can’t hear anything anymore.”
He smiled gently, and I noticed for the first time how tired he looked—not physically, but like someone who’d spent too much of his life searching for a door that didn’t exist.
“Maybe,” he said, “the goal isn’t to go there. Maybe it’s to find a piece of the moon here—on Earth—without losing gravity.”
He nodded, and then he was gone, his coat brushing the chair as he passed. I sat alone, the sound of the doorbell fading behind him, watching the steam from my coffee disappear into the cold air.
The moon was still faintly visible in the window, pale and imperfect.
For the first time, I noticed how much it looked like a scar—something healed, but still there to remind you.
And I realized he was right.
We don’t need to go to the moon.
We just need to stop running long enough to notice the one already inside us—the one that glows quietly behind the noise, patient, unbothered, waiting for us to finally look up.
That night, walking home through the wet streets, I caught my reflection in a shop window. For a second, it looked like I was floating. Then I blinked, and gravity found me again.
I smiled, quietly, to no one.
I didn’t need the moon anymore.
I’d already paid for the silence, and it was worth every cent.
life 